Fedora Weekly News Issue 231

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 231[1] for the week ending June 23, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

In this week's FWN, we start off with news from the Fedora Planet, including a posting on yum's "history" command, discussion on how to handle the Fedora Project's microblogging accounts, and an update on new features expected for Fedora 14. In Marketing news, coverage of discussion of SWOT analysis approaches between Fedora and other distributions, another discussion around an alternate name for the "Fedora Summer of Code" project, and announcement of a new blog entitled "Fedora Next: Tracking the bleeding edge of Fedora development". Next up are a variety of Fedora news pieces in the trade press and blogosphere in Fedora In The News. In Quality Assurance, coverage of the new proven testers process, revision of the critical path documentation on the wiki, and recommendations for Fedora 14 based on the Fedora 13 QA experience. In Translation team news, details on Fedora 14 tasks for the team, a new version of gettext-0-18 for rawhide and f13-updates testing, and details on new sponsors and team members for the Fedora Localization Project. In Art Team news, a call for maintainers for the Design Suite Spin, and coverage of the weekly design IRC meeting. Our issue wraps up with Security Advisories, bringing us current with security-related packages released in the past week. Read on!

The audio version of FWN - FAWN - is back! You can listen to existing issues[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org

Planet Fedora

General

Mel Chua wondered[1] how e-mail message threading works and how Message IDs are generated.

The Red Hat Press Office mentioned[2] some of the happenings at the Opensource.com's "Open Your World, an online forum exploring how the open source ideals of participation, collaboration, community, transparency and meritocracy are applied beyond the technology industry."

Seth Vidal suggested[3] that you should check out the features of yum's new (in F12/F13) "history" command.

Luke Slater discussed[4] how to handle Fedora's microblogging accounts and different languages and cultures. "This is a post in response to the discussions that have been going on in relation to what exactly we should do with the Fedora microblogging accounts and one of the subjects that I’m rather concerned about is how we’re going to deal with different languages and cultures."

Rob Escriva wrote[6] about bootstrapping Python projects. "I'll be sharing how I use the standard library's doctest module, Georg Brandl's sphinx package, Logilab's PyLint program and Ned Batchelder's coverage module to keep the number of inconsistencies and defects in both my code and documentation low."

Ian MacGregor had[7] some upgrade issues. "Just because xorg isn't working doesn't mean you can't get things done. Today I proved that you don't even need xorg to be able to surf the web, check email, download files, chat in IRC and have multiple windows open - though it's nice to have a working xorg. Keep some CLI apps installed and learn how to use the command line.. you never know when all of this may come in handy."

Peter Hutterer summarized[9] the touchpad features now available in xorg. Peter also explained[10] some of the common misconceptions and issues about keyboard input under X.

Clint Savage continued[11] the discussion of "Combating Apathy in [Free and Open Source] Communities".

Mark McLoughlin announced[12] a new REST API for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager. "The only current API for RHEV-M is a Windows Powershell plugin which provides a perfectly fine scripting interface for RHEV-M on Windows, but isn’t so easy to call remotely or to integrate with another application. By adding a REST API, we’re adding an integration interface which we hope everyone will find convenient to use."

Kam Salisbury found[15] that Cygwin under Windows 7 has some minor networking issues. "Network communication also works, if you edit the Windows 7 firewall outbound rules to allow cygwin to communicate."

Andrew Overholt announced[16] the availability of Linux Tools 0.6 as part of the Helios Eclipse simultaneous release.

SWOT Comparative Analysis

Last week a thread was started by Nelson Marques[1] about SWOT - comparative analysis. This threat aim to establish ground for comparison among distros. This is a promising topic.

Search for a new name for Fedora Summer of Code

Robin Bergeron[2] is looking for a more representative name for Fedora Summer of Code. Apparently this name is creating confusion due similarity with others summer sessions. Having Northern and Southern summers included is wonderful. Brainstorming has produced many names.

Fedora Microblog content update

Paul Frields[3]has working hard for Microblog content. Now that we have control over fedora account on twitter and now also on identi.ca too[4], marketing team is discussing on how to make the most of those resources. A related thread was started by Luke Slater[5] about Microblogging research. This is leading into new grounds, and the considerations regarding translation of the content[6].

A new blog for tracking the community aspects of the Fedora Project

Rahul Sundaram[7] announced a new blog named "Fedora Next: Tracking the bleeding edge of Fedora development" which tries to show the community side of developing Fedora.

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a posting from the "If Not True Then False" blog from 2010-06-8:

"This is guide with screenshots, howto install Fedora (currently Fedora
13) with gPXE and BFO (boot.fedoraproject.org). BFO combines a series of
recent technologies to produce a new boot stack. The glue that holds
everything together is gPXE. Boot method is similar to PXE Boot. It uses
very small images (iso, floppy, disk) to bootstrap a machine that then
contacts a remote server for boot information."

Fedora 13 “Goddard” Review – Gnome Desktop

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a posting covering Fedora 13 from a blog from 2010-06-16:

"I faced only one ’serious’ bug during my time in Fedora, but only
because I didn’t think about it. One of Fedora’s defining features is
SELinux, which is a Security Enhancement for Linux, and I forgot to add
an exception into the Firewall/SELinux to allow me to connect to it.
Otherwise, Fedora was completely uneventful and great. I’d rate it about
an eight and a half out of ten."

Zarafa Collaboration Platform 6.40 Goes Gold

Robert Scheck forwarded[1] the official press release about Zarafa that mentions Fedora nicely:

"Since February 2010, the Fedora Project is shipping the 6.30 series of the
ZCP. The active Fedora releases 12 and 13 will ship Zarafa 6.40.0 as well
as the Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository for Red
Hat Enterprise Linux releases 4 and 5. EPEL 6 beta (for the upcoming
RHEL 6 in autumn, which is RHEL 6 beta right now) will also get Zarafa
6.40.0 as soon as possible[2]. The ZCP 6.40.0 is also available through the Canonical Partner repository for the popular Ubuntu distribution. Mandriva, a third free Linux distribution project, includes Zarafa as well."

Kara Schlitz forwarded[1] a posting from Desktop Linux on Fedora 13 from 2009-06-21:

"The community-driven Fedora 13 Linux distribution has been reviewed by
eWEEK, which was highly impressed with its cutting-edge enterprise
features. The review praises Fedora security and permissions features
such as the AccountsDialog user management utility, and it also likes the new command line interface for NetworkManager.

As was noted in our coverage of the _beta release of Fedora 13 in April, the new Fedora release has introduced a key features including automatic
print-driver installation, the Btrfs filesystem, and enhanced 3D driver support. Released last month in final form, Fedora 13 has now been given the once over from the enterprise angle by Jason Brooks at our sister
publication, eWEEK."

Gnote: Fedora 13 note tool (ghacks.net)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a recent review of the Gnote note tool available in Fedora 13:

"I take notes. I take a LOT of notes. When I’m not at a PC I use pen and
paper. When I am at a PC I use whatever tool is the most accessible and
the most usable. For the longest time that tool was my text editor (most
likely Nano). The only problem with Nano is it take some serious work to
have any organization…and it’s accessibility wasn’t the best. To take
notes I had to open up a console, enter the command to start nano, type
my notes, and save/title/close my notes. But over the last few years
much better tools have evolved for taking notes. One such tool is the
Fedora default,
Gnote[2]."

Setting up a network printer in Fedora 13 (ghacks.net)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] another posting from ghacks.net about setting up a network printer in Fedora 13:

"I have been bragging to everyone how user-friendly Fedora has become
with it’s most recent release for a while now. Some people are prone to
believe me and some are not. No matter where you stand, if you have any
experience with Linux, you know there are certain aspects that can be a
bit of a challenge. Printing has been one of those issues for many
people for a while now. That has all changed with recent releases.
Fedora 13 is no exception. The installation and configuration of
printers has become a no-brainer for both local and networked printers"

Fedora 13 Goddard. Bah. Meh. Hmm? Ok.

"Fedora 13 Goddard is ... I don't really know what to say. Personally,
the most important part of system usage is stability. Compared to
previous versions, the difference is huge. Fedora 13 is stable and
robust and this makes it an adequate candidate for daily use. With
autoten and similar programs, you solve the availability problem of
software, including popular applications and codecs. Still, placing a
shortcut on the desktop, which reads "grab your non-free stuff over
here" would have made a big change for the average user."

Proven testers

During the QA weekly meeting of 2010-06-14[1], Adam Williamson reported that he had drafted a set of instructions[2] for proven testers (under the new proven tester policy[3]), and also had updated various wiki pages[4][5][6] to reference the proven testers process. James Laska noted that he was monitoring the ticket[7] requesting the infrastructure team to configure Bodhi to require proven tester feedback on critical path updates. Adam subsequently announced his draft on the mailing list[8], followed by a second draft[9]. Aaron Faanes stepped in[10] with a much-improved revision of Adam's draft[11]. Adam replied[12] to thank Aaron for his improvements.

AutoQA

During the QA meeting, Kamil Paral reported that the AutoQA team had decided to re-prioritize their goals with the aim of delivering concrete results as soon as possible, even where this meant not immediately meeting the whole range of aims for the project[13]. They had decided the current priorities were to test and finish the Bodhi hook, implementing the ability to run potentially dangerous tests in a virtual machine, creating a test instance of the autotest environment for testing new features without breaking the stable instance, getting a publicly accessible machine for the results database (resultdb), and working on resultdb.

Critical path wiki update

James Laska announced[1] that he had revised the critical path documentation on the Wiki. He had created a new page[2] to complement the existing critical path proposal page[3], which had initially been only the proposal of the critical path process but had come to be used as a general reference for the implemented process as well.

Kernel triage

During the Bugzappers weekly meeting of 2010-06-15[1], JP reported that he had updated the stock responses on the older kernel triage page[2] to match the style of the newer Bugzappers stock responses[3], and asked for feedback on the changes.

Triage metrics

During the Bugzappers meeting, Jeff Raber reported his progress on the new triage metrics project. He had created a Bugzilla query[1] which lists bugs triaged in the previous 30 days, and was working on some modifications to python-bugzilla to provide output suited to triage statistics. Adam Williamson promised to put Jeff in touch with Will Woods to discuss merging the python-bugzilla changes.

Setting needinfo on impending end-of-life bugs

During the Bugzappers meeting, Matej Cepl suggested that when adding a comment to bugs on releases that will soon go end-of-life, we should also set the needinfo state to mark that additional input is needed to keep the bug open. After some discussion, everyone agreed that this was a good idea.

Fedora 14 recommendations

James Laska announced[1] the list of recommendations for the Fedora 14 cycle based on the Fedora 13 QA retrospective[2]. He noted that the next task would be to organize the recommendations into a set of trac tickets to track their implementation.

Reopening bugs

Matt McCutchen brought up the topic[1] of reopening bugs, specifically the fact that most Bugzilla users can only reopen bugs that they filed (or which are assigned to them). He mentioned that he had filed an RFE asking that all users be given permission to reopen bugs[2]. Adam Williamson said[3] he would forward the proposal to the Bugzilla maintainers for consideration.

Translation

Fedora 14 Schedule

John Poelstra has put together the Fedora 14 schedule for the Documentation and Translation Teams[1]. FLSco member Noriko Mizumoto has suggested some changes to the schedule including removal of the tasks to be done by other teams and to include a few timelines that would inform translators about the start dates for some tasks[2].

New Sponsor for the Arabic Team

The current Co-ordinator of the Arabic Team, Munzir Taha has been upgraded to a 'Sponsor' role and would now be able to sponsor new translators in the Arabic Translation Team[1]. Until recently, the Arabic team did not have any 'Sponsor' which resulted in a number of pending requests in the sponsorship queue for the Arabic translators.

Artwork

Maintainers Wanted for the Design Suite Spin

Sebastian Dziallas, the maintainer of the Fedora Design Suite spin, raised[1] a call for help with the maintenance " I'll be starting college at the end of the summer and
I'm suspecting that I might have a little less time then. Hence, I'm looking at handing the Design Suite off". So far two people, [ChrisJones|Chris Jones][2] and Papadeas Pierros[3] showed their interest.

Weekly Design Team IRC Meeting

This week the Design Team IRC Meeting was chaired by Ian Weller and the agenda[1] included a status check of the Fedora 14 artwork, the ticketing system (Trac) queue and open discussions. The minutes are available[2].

Following the meeting, Jef van Schendel reported on the list the progress of to of the tasks he volunteered on: a background for microblogging sites[3] and standardized hackergotchi labels for Planet[4]